This invention relates, in general, to electronics, and more particularly, to electronic components having airbridges and methods of manufacturing electronic components having airbridges.
Airbridges are used in electronic components to increase their interconnect speed. Airbridges provide higher interconnect speed because air is used as the interlayer dielectric between adjacent interconnect layers. Air has a lower dielectric constant than conventional interlayer dielectrics such as silicon dioxide and silicon nitride. The lower dielectric constant decreases the parasitic capacitance between adjacent interconnect layers, and the lower parasitic capacitance enables the higher interconnect speed.
Airbridges are typically made of gold to provide low electrical resistance, but gold is a soft material. The soft, exposed gold of the airbridges is often damaged during semiconductor wafer processing, assembly, and packaging in an automated manufacturing process. The damaged airbridges reduce the manufacturing yields for the electronic components.
To improve the manufacturing yields, special handling and manually intensive processes can be used to manufacture the electronic components. However, these special techniques are slow and expensive.
Accordingly, a need exists for a method of manufacturing an electronic component with an airbridge that is compatible with an automated manufacturing process and that has high manufacturing yields. A need also exists for an electronic component with an airbridge that is manufacturable, robust, and reliable.